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Some Once Upon A Times End Grim…

If you want to know what really happened once upon a time, ask Briar Blackwood. Nearly sixteen, cynical and goth, Briar lives a less-than-fairytale life in the home of her rotten foster mother and snarky foster sisters. With her biting wit and deadpan demeanor, the other kids call her Queen of Darkness. All the better for keeping everyone at arm’s distance, she thought. But now she’s screwed up by seriously and inconveniently crushing on the most popular guy at school.

And if that isn’t sucky enough, Briar finds herself suddenly thrust into a hidden bloodthirsty world, filled with dark magic, curses, and poisoned spinning wheels where she learns the deadly truth of her identity and the reason she’s never fit in.

Can she truly be the fabled Sleeping Beauty? Or has she finally cracked?

And, hello! Aren’t elves and fairies supposed to be dainty and adorable? If she wanted to deal with drooling, snapping jaws she could have stayed at home.

Now she has to rescue the gorgeous guy that may be her one true love, and stop a wicked queen bent on destroying her. Luckily, being a bad-ass has its perks. With an uncontrollable power rising within her, no one knows for sure if Briar has a happily-ever-after future. But if she can handle the mean-girl clique at school, she can damn well go toe-to-toe with ogres, wolves and wicked witches.

Advance Praise:

“Ancient smashes head-on into modern in Timothy Roderick’s strangely clever and enchanting debut young adult/fantasy novel, Briar Blackwood’s Grimmest of Fairytales. Definitely snarky and weird, sometimes dark, and packed with plenty of extraordinary twists and turns, Roderick has retooled such fairytales as Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella into a suspenseful, wry, modern magical mystery. Briar is a teen goth girl with a problem—she’s either insane or actually living in a fairytale. Everything in Briar’s life begins going bump in the night and she goes completely into denial. Only when she realizes the nightmare she’s experiencing is real, does she take the frog by the legs and leap beyond betrayal, confusion, and certain death. …Reminiscent and just as entertaining as Mary Janice Davidson, with parallel worlds, talking animals, and even sooth-saying social workers, Roderick leaves the door open for more wildly wonderful Briar Blackwood magic!”

Sirona Knight, author of Faery Magick and The Shapeshifter Tarot

“In Briar Blackwood’s Grimmest of Fairytales author Timothy Roderick has fashioned an imaginative mashup of plots and characters from the beloved stories we all grew up with. Breathing new life into those old tales, Roderick drops characters such as Sleeping Beauty and the Big Bad Wolf (or even a whole pack of them) right into the middle of modern America, then draws us back into his own magical and amusingly inverted version of the fairy tale world along with them. This is exactly the kind of story I would love to wake up in, full of wit and irony and with nary a damsel-in-distress in sight.”

–Laura Perry, author of Ariadne’s Thread: Awakening the Wonders of the Ancient Minoans in Our Modern Lives

“A suspenseful, dark, coming of age tale of a teenager who must learn to navigate between the worlds of everyday life and of Fairy. The language is rich and the enjoyable twists of plot will keep you guessing.”

–Ellen Evert Hopman, author of the Priestess of the Forest trilogy of Druid novels

“Take a journey with Briar Blackwood in this unique and entertaining story written by renowned author Timothy Roderick. This debut novel — the first in a series — will undoubtedly appeal to adults of all ages whose hearts have a fondness for magic, fantasy, and a dash of darkness.”